


The Death of Me

by Endangered_Slug



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Rumbelle - Freeform, The one where Gold is a children's song writer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-15 12:13:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11805795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Endangered_Slug/pseuds/Endangered_Slug
Summary: Lachlan Gold spent decades building his reputation as a beloved children's songwriter and singer. He wrote every single song for his son Neal who is now off at his second year in college leaving his father behind.Lacey French is an up and coming singer who would do anything to get the attention of music executives even if it meant doing some naughty covers of some silly children's songs.Belle French is Lacey's twin sister who is doing her best to keep them from killing each other and keep herself from falling for the man who is suing the pants off her sister.





	The Death of Me

**Author's Note:**

> Hi.

Like a lot of stories, it began with a phone call...

“Hey, Pop, uh… did you change your mind about licensing out your songs?” Neal’s voice was crackling with nervous uncertainty and Gold could hear the strains of one of his first songs, _My Unicorn Has Fleas,_ playing in the background.

Gold smiled to himself. It had been one of Neal’s favorites as a boy and it was good to know that, even if he was off to college and ostensibly too old for silly songs, his son still listened to the songs written for him. Then there was a raucous cheer following the chorus sounding like Neal’s tiny dorm was packed full of people.

It sounded like a party, which didn’t sound like his son at all. Not at ten p.m. on a Sunday, and, even though they used to play his songs at parties all the time, Gold thought that twenty was a bit past his target demographic. Unless Neal was bragging about him, Gold wondered. That hadn’t happened for years. Maybe Neal was already past the embarrassed-by-his-dad stage and now he’d cycled back to being cool again. Gold didn’t think that would happen until Neal was at least twenty-five, but he’d take it sooner rather than later. He missed being cool.

“Dad?”

At the sound of Neal’s voice, Gold blinked back to the present. “Sorry, no, I, uh, haven’t given anyone permission to use my songs.” He frowned when more catcalls and laughter came over the phone. “Why are you asking?”

“Okay, Dad, look, write this down: Lacey Does Gold. Got it? It’s by some girl named Lacey French. She’s on YouTube.”

“What’s all this then?” Gold asked, rolling his chair over to his desktop. His computer was already fired up as he was editing his latest video (he’d learned how years ago, taking a couple of community college courses in video making while Neal was in school.)

Neal’s voice sounded off when he replied. “Just do it and then play the first video and let me know what you think.”

Gold’s eyebrows shot up when Lacey French’s channel popped up, noting that she was young and beautiful and scantily dressed, then disappeared entirely when he saw her playlist. It was _his_ playlist. The chit was covering all of his songs!

“Are you kidding me?” he squawked. He scrolled down the page of listed videos, a throbbing in his forehead that he’d last experienced when his ex-wife tried taking him to court for more money. He’d never allowed anyone to cover his songs. At least, no one over the age of twelve, for he’d seen some charming videos of preschoolers singing them. And he didn’t mind if they were sung at schools, or in hospitals, or by scared wee tots standing in front of a microphone warbling out _Banana Pudding_ and _Big, Big Moon_ during talent night. He wasn’t a _monster_.

But this… this _woman_ who barely had any clothes on was bloody well not six years old and she definitely did not have permission to poach on his songs.

“You’re not playing it, Dad,” Neal said, interrupting his mental tirade. “You gotta hit play.”

“I know how this works, boy,” Gold began, but his lecture faded as the video started. “I've been on YouTube since before... Holy hell.”

Gold didn’t know who this Lacey French was or where she came from, but he’d certainly never meant for anyone to sing _Monkey Flinging Potato Pants_ like _that_. He didn’t know how she did it or why she did it, but she made the carefully crafted lyrics meant for five year-olds sound absolutely filthy.

“How did-”

“My roommate showed me.” Neal explained. “Aaaaaaand everyone else on the floor. She’s, uh, quite popular.”

Gold snorted. “I’ll bet she is,” he grumbled, barely able to watch as she cavorted around the screen.

“Thought you’d want to know.”

Gold stared at Lacey’s barely conceal breasts as she posed with a stuffed monkey, doing things to his song that she had no right to do.

“Pop?”

“Hm? No, yeah. Yeah, I’m here, I’m just... “

“Yeah. Though in a way it’s a tribute, you know? She must love your songs.”

Gold doubted that very much as the video thankfully ended and the next one in the queue popped up. Gold watched the buffering arrow spin in fascinated horror until the video loaded and his heart sank. It was _Kitty Toes_. He winced as the music started. She’d changed that, too. The arrangement was completely different, making it sound like a stripper’s act than the sweet children’s song it was meant to be.

“So, uh, I gotta go, Dad. You alright? Gonna make it?”

Gold grunted, unable to speak while watching this woman traipse about wearing almost nothing while singing a song he’d written when Neal’s cat ran away. “Yeah. Just gonna call my lawyer and have this taken down.”

“Sure, Pop. Sorry to ruin your night. Just thought you might want to know.”

Gold tore his eyes away from his computer, blinking the image of Lacey away from his brain but it felt like it was burned there permanently. “No, you did right. She shouldn’t be doing this to your songs.”

“They’re _your_ songs, Dad. You wrote them.”

“Well, yeah, but they were for you.”

Neal chuckled a bit. “I love you, too, Pop. Talk to you next week.”

Neal hung up before Gold could reply, but he didn’t think he’d be able to hold any sort of conversation after his son's revelation. He turned back to his computer and clicked on the next video, not even watching _Kitty Toes_ all the way through. He called his lawyer, leaving a very irate message to call him in the morning as he had someone to sue. Then he watched Lacey French jiggle her derriere through _Peanut Brittle Jamboree_.

He was going to ruin her life.

 

* * *

 

Belle French loved being a children’s librarian. Loved working with the kids, loved working with the books. Didn’t _quite_ so much love working with the parents and there were a few co-workers she wouldn’t mind pushing off the pier, but, for the most part, she loved her job.

She especially loved it when her favorite time of the week rolled around, The Monday Blues Sing Along when she got to dance with a rowdy bunch of preschoolers to all their favorite songs. Sometimes she was able to find people to come in and perform, but mostly, with her limited budget, it was just her and a ukulele and music blaring out of the CD player.

Belle had her favorite singers, but her favorite by far was Golden Buggyboots. Honestly, the man was a genius for coming up with songs like _Smoosh_ and _Pirate in my Pocket_. They were silly on the surface, but underneath the upbeat tempo were words that had real impact. She’d written her thesis on the meaning of his lyrics and how they allowed young children to process their emotions through song in a fun and safe way. She adored the songs and she wanted to share them with her patrons.

Her sister Lacey sometimes came in when she had nothing better to do, and together they’d put on an act that had the entire library ringing from the bell tower down to the sub-basement. It drove the head librarian nuts when that happened, but even Mrs. Nolan couldn’t deny the good the sing along did for their littlest patrons so she kept the complaints to a bare, “maybe just keep the noise down to a ten.”

On this particular Monday, during this particular September, Belle was halfway through a rousing rendition of _Jake the Snake_ when Lacey came barreling into the room looking like she was ready to tear the place apart with her bare fingers.

Belle nodded to her sister to show her she’d been seen and then motioned her head to the left to tell her to get the heck out before the kids noticed. Then she went through _Banana Pudding_ and _Grasshopper Boots_ before The Monday Blues Sing Along came to a close.

She held out the box to collect the scarves she’d handed out for the sing along and said goodbye to the kids as they filed out into the children’s section where they would carefully select books to leave scattered on the floor for her to clean up later. Sometimes the books were checked out, but more often than not, the kids preferred to leave a mess. _That_ was not in the job description.

She took a deep breath then turned to her twin who was waiting for her with all the patience of the three year-olds that just left. As usual, Lacey’s personal style had left little to the imagination even in the middle of the morning of a work day.

“What happened this time?” she asked, getting right to the point.

“Nothing,” Lacey said with false brightness. “Just rejected again. I swear record executives are both blind and deaf. And stupid,” she added as an afterthought. She picked up the plastic shaker eggs that were left forgotten and began tossing them one by one into their container. Half made it in, the other half Belle fetched and handed to her sister until they were all put away.

“They’re buttheads,” Belle said. “They wouldn’t know talent if it came up behind them and stole their wallet.”

Lacey frowned at her. “It was that one time,” she said, a tinge of petulance coloring her voice before she smirked. “And anyway, I did get a deal out of it.”

Belle rolled her eyes at her sister, shaking her head helplessly. “Lacey. My darling, dearest, loveliest sister. Plea bargaining is not the kind of deal you want.”

“I know,” Lacey mumbled. She bent her head to look at her chipped nail polish, refusing to look at her sister.

Belle sighed, wishing she could wave a magic wand and make her sister’s dreams come true. But she couldn’t do that. The most she had was a ukulele and an arsenal of feel good children’s songs at her disposal.

She grabbed her ukulele and gave an experimental strum.

“Oh come on, I’m not five,” Lacey said, rolling her eyes.

“Music doesn’t have an age limit,” Belle chimed. “Now get an egg and join in.”

Lacey sighed, but she did as she was told and shook it up and down once then glared at it as if the egg was the source of all her problems.

Belle smiled at her anyway. “Sing with me, you’ll feel better. Ready?”

Lacey started a sullen rhythm.

“I had a bad day…” Belle began, singing softly.

“... had a bad day,” Lacey repeated after a moment of belligerent silence.

“Stubbed my toe!”

*shake* *shake* “Toe,” after a very dramatic sigh.

Belle ignored her sister’s reluctance and belted out, “Mashed potatoes in my hair.”

Lacey’s frown began to fade as Belle sang through the lyrics, then she picked up at the chorus leaving her sister behind.

“Bad day! Bad day! No fair, don’t care! Bad day! I _don’t_ wanna _eat_ that! I _don’t_ wanna _go_ there. I _don’t_ wanna _do_ that!  Bad day! Bad day! No fair! NO FAIR!”

Belle had stopped strumming when her sister finally joined in, watching as the pain of another rejection flit over her face. Lacey rarely let her true emotions show, but the exception was when she was singing. She bellowed out the song, nearly singing herself hoarse by the last chorus then flung herself on Belle’s shoulders with a choking sob.

Belle held her close, not making a sound, just stroking Lacey’s hair until her sister finally pulled away, sniffling and looked shamefaced.

“S’not fair,” Lacey said, her head hanging down.

“I know it’s not.”

“I’m _good_. I can sing!”

“You _are_. Better than me and we’re twins,” Belle said, hugging her shoulders. “You got all the talent.”

Lacey sniffled. “And the looks,” she said, her trademark smirk finally coming through.

“That, too,” Belle agreed. “Come one, we’ll figure something out. Have you thought more about setting up your own YouTube channel? Getting your stuff you there and building up a fan base? I’ve heard it can work.”

Lacey looked away, sheepishly. “Yeah, I’ve uh… It’s something to think about.”

“There you go,” Belle said, encouragingly. “Come over to my place tonight and we’ll get that set up at least. Sound good?”

“Um. Yeah,” Lacey said after a moment. “S’good.”

 

* * *

 

“So what do you think,” Gold said, leaning forward in his chair.

Jefferson glanced at him from the laptop, his lips tightly pressed together as he tried not to smile.

“Well, I mean, those are clearly your songs…”

“Yeah.”

“And she’s... well, she’s not under the allowable age you’ve established...”

“And?”

Jefferson cleared his throat. “I think our best course of action is to contact YouTube and ask them to take her channel down. Then we’ll send a Cease and Desist to this, uh…" He peered at the name in the corner, his eyes dropping back down to the exposed cleavage before flitting back to Gold with a sheepish smirk. "To Ms. French and that should do it.”

Even her name sounded filthy.

Gold seat back, relieved. “And if she refuses to cease and desist?”

“Then we take her to court, but you won’t see anything from it. First rule of litigation is to never sue poor people.” Jefferson shrugged. “She’s clearly making some money. Not a whole lot, but some. But she _is_ tarnishing your reputation with her, ah, her act and as your lawyer I can’t allow that to happen.”

Gold gave a dry chuckle. “She should write her own songs.”

“I’ll tell her that.” Jefferson closed the laptop and turned to his friend. “Anything else? How’s Neal?”

Gold sat back, relaxing now that everything was settled and they were back on familiar, comforting territory. “He’s good. He’s the one who let me know about this. Apparently she’s a big hit with his roommate.”

“Narced her out, huh?”

It was Gold’s turn to shrug. “He’s a good lad and I’m sure he’d rather not have done so, but he knows how important it is to me that the songs stay with the kids. Imagine some five year-old watching one of my videos but accidentally clicking on one of hers instead?”

Jefferson picked up a pen and twirled it between his fingers, smiling fondly. “I’d have loved it when I was five.”

“That’s ‘cause you’re a pervert,” Gold said, rolling his eyes.

Jefferson grinned madly, but didn’t deny it. “Well, don’t worry too much about this. I’ll have the C and D sent out today and YouTube informed within an hour. She should be taken down by end of business tomorrow. It’ll be like she fell through a portal," he said, spreading his fingers out like a magician.

Gold got up to leave with a heavy groan, feeling much older than thirty-nine. “And if not?”

“Then we play hardball,” Jefferson said with a wicked grin.

Gold smiled back, wryly. “ _That_ I can do.”

 

* * *

 

 

Lachlan Gold was only nineteen when Neal was born and barely twenty-two when his wife, as much as she tried in the beginning, decided that she couldn’t handle the pressure of domestic life any longer and walked out. The boy had been distraught without his mother, especially at bedtime when he feared going to sleep lest he wake up to find that his papa had left him, too.

Gold would sing to him endlessly, making up songs on the fly. Silly little tunes to get Neal to finally smile or sleep or just let out that angry, scared feeling that Milah had left behind as her legacy to her son.

He had been a musician when they met and he was good at it. Small, well-played local venues and some touring gave him a growing fan base and he was just getting serious about his music when he got Milah pregnant. When she broke the news to him, Gold quit the nighttime gigs and the road trips and got a respectable job pulling boxes at a warehouse. It was grueling, difficult work and he hated it, but it paid well and provided insurance, which was what he needed for now.

It wasn’t good enough for Milah though, who was attracted to wild musicians and reflected stardom not lowly warehouse workers, and one day, after Gold got home with an aching back and sore arms, Milah walked out and simply never returned.

Gold found himself in a small town, his wife gone, and sole custody of a son who he adored more than anyone in the world. It scared him how much he loved his son and it scared him how ill-equipped he was to take care of him. He’d had to quit his job at the warehouse because he had no one to watch Neal during the day, and accepted a nighttime janitor job over at the university instead.

It sucked and the pay was worse and he soon found himself falling behind on bills. He had been pawning his best guitar when he saw the boots sitting on a rack with other oddities. They were a pair of cowboy boots, the leather dyed golden with a metal cap on the pointed toes. Some misguided soul had painstakingly hand-stitched bright, jewel-toned insects on them. How it was achieved, Gold had no idea, but they were loud and obnoxious and he knew that Neal would love them. On a whim, he bought the boots and pocketed the rest of the money he’d made from the sale of his beloved Fender.

He still had his acoustic guitar and he knew people who would let him use their recording equipment for a case of beer and before a month had passed, Gold had recorded all of the songs he’d made up during those frantic, lonely nights spent comforting his distraught son. Another hundred he’d scraped together was invested in printing out a couple dozen CDs and some promotional material and Golden Buggyboots was born.

By then, Neal was in preschool run through a city program and naturally Gold volunteered to entertain the kids whenever they had an event. He was an instant success and Neal’s sweet disposition had finally come back after watching his dad sing _Llama Llama Ding-Dong_ for the tenth time in a row.  

Sometimes, as he was composing a song, he wondered how in blazes he’d become a kids’ songwriter, but in reality, it didn’t take much to switch gears from writing hard rock to writing for children. The theory was the same even if the lyrics were different. The truth was, a song was a song was a song was a song and, if he found himself writing for hyperactive kindergarteners instead of teens filled with ennui, the whole point was to drive their parents crazy with neverending, on-a-loop singing. They were written to get in your head and stay there for days. So, really, nothing changed except his target demographic.

He’d been widely popular when Neal was little. Now, Gold was still in demand, but getting too old to goof off like he used to. His sets were mostly just him and his guitar and a harmonica while dozens of kids surrounded him doing the toddler bop. No one was throwing panties at him, but then, at least no one threw diapers either.

Gold would do anything to protect his son and the songs he’d written for him. And no twit of a girl who liked to show off her knickers was going to take that away.

  
  
  



End file.
